Starting at noon each Wednesday, our members may select one write from among their Collection for entery into our Featured Poem contest. Submitters are expected to understand and apply the rules below. Teams of anonymous members rate the poems based on a set of fixed characteristics, described below. In a timely way, these raters will submit their ratings average scores will be automatically compiled. Awards will be presented for recognition on Sunday evening for those writes submitted by noon the previous Wednesday.

To submit your write, please go to "My Writes" and "Manage Poems" within your User Panel on the right side pane.

On selection of "Manage Poems, your Collection Individual Writes will open. Notice the contest icon in the "Actions" column. Select the contest icon on any one of the rows having a Status of "Visible" that you wish to submit to the Featured Poem contest. Then, follow the instructions at the top of the page to choose a style which best describes the writing style of the selected write.

Once the poem is submitted, you can confirm that fact by noting that the Status of the write has changed to "Submitted".

The following rules should guide you during submission of your work into the contest. Our subsequent judging of the entries is also described below. For detailed information about the number of winning poems, see the Forum. Please direct any questions to the Moderators or Admins.

Good luck!

RULES FOR SUBMISSION:

1. Contest Frequency: Each member may enter exactly one poem every seven days to the Featured contest. For the contest, the week begins at noon each Wednesday. So, for example, if you enter a poem on Wednesday afternoon, you will not be able to enter another poem until after the contest closes, at 11:59 Eastern time the following Wednesday.

2. Define Poem Type: Authors must identify their submission as either a free verse or rhyming poem type. (Stories should be considered "free verse" if that type does not appear.)

3. Originality: All work within the submission must be the original creation of the member making the submission.

4. No Identifying Marks: The member cannot include their name or other identifying marks within the submission.

5. Inclusiveness: All members of Creative-Poems, including Free, Premium, anonymous judges, and Staff, are free to submit their writes to the contest. All may win.

6. No Adult or Explicit Submissions: Writes from Adult and Explicit categories can not be submitted to the contest.

7. Collaborations Allowed: Co-writes and Group Poems may be submitted to the contest. In the latter case, a Group Leader can submit only one group poem each period from the appropriate list from My Collaborations, Group Writes. Only for Group writes will the both the write and winner's medallion appear in the profile of each of the collaborators.

8. Submission Timing: Entries may be submitted at any time. Entries submitted by noon each Wednesday will be qualified for that week's contest. Poems submitted after Wednesday will be automatically entered into the following week's contest.

9. Poem Resubmission: A write can be submitted to the contest only once, unless it is withdrawn by Adminstration because of insufficient participation. Otherwise, there is seldom a reason for our judging panels to see the same poem twice. A significantly re-written and/or improved poem, however, may be re-published as a new work and subsequently be re-submitted to the contest one additional time.

1. Judging: Featured poems are submitted by members and sequentially rated by a two panels of anonymous members.

2. Criteria: The award is based on creativity, originality, spelling, consistent punctuation, and effective grammar of the entries. Entries will initially be judged for grammar, punctuation, and spelling. The best of those are subsequently rated for their creativity, originality, and meaning.

3. Number of Winners: The total number of winners depends on the number of entries. All poems submitted to the contest will be rated. As many as five rhyming poems and five non-rhyming poems will be selected each week.

4. Writing: Formatting, backgrounds, images, and music are removed and will not influence the poems rating. The raters will only see the text version of the poems submitted.

5. Contingencies:If author's name or identifying marks are included in the submission, the raters will disqualify it by rendering zero rating values. If the author is recognized by a rater, even without identifying marks, the rater must fairly rate the poem or be recused from rating the write by providing no ratings for that submission.

7. Conflict of Interest: Contest raters are prohibited from judging or influencing the progress their own work or collaborations. This is enforced by software. Raters are expected to rate fairly and objectively irregardless of who submits the work.

8. Purpose and Finality: The contest is intended to provide a way to recognize and draw attention to those poems our anonymous teams of members recognize for their quality. The decision of the raters will be final and promptly reported to all members.

9. Showcase: The current winners will be displayed on the 'Featured Poems List' on the left side of the site.

10. Medallion: The creative-poems Award will be displayed alongside each of winning poems.